Tuesday, February 17, 2009

I feel like I am a pretty strong person and I love myself very much. This wasn't always the case and while I feel this way most of the time, sometimes I allow myself to get down on myself and give into being weak. I think it is normal.

I also feel like I am fairly thick skinned, meaning I don't take things to heart when people talk bad about me or tell me I am wrong. Heck I know I am not perfect and I know what areas I could improve on. If I was perfect, I wouldn't be human and I wouldn't be me.

However, once I open my heart to you, be it family or friend, I get a very thin skin and can be hurt by you. I think this is also a normal part of being human. We have emotions and I don't think as a whole we were meant to be reclusive. I realize there are exceptations to ever rule but my point is we seek out people to be around and have in our life, and therefore we can open ourselves to being hurt.

Not sure where I was going with this.... Hmmm... Let's change direction a bit... I am trying to explain my recent absence a bit but it is very scrambled up.

I just feel like my life is spinning around me right now and I do not feel like fixing it at the moment. I might whine a bit or complain, heck I might even cry or worse get sick from it. But I know it is a moment in time and I know that I will get back to me. I call these times my depression moments. I am down in this hole, just looking up and watching, waiting for the skies to clear. I can only focus on one area in my life at a time when I am like this. It has to be work most of the time or else I can't support the family.

The house is the first thing that takes a back seat. Gosh I want my house clean but if I just hide in the hole for a bit, I can't see it. I am not a great housekeeper, never have been. I see the pet hair. I see the 100 glasses and the trash and the laundry.

I just want to pay someone else to do it who either 1. is good at it and/or 2. does a good job because it is their job. I don't care which just so long as I have a clean house and I am not the one doing it....

Cooking is not fun for me anymore either.... heck it wasn't, even before I climbed on down this hole. I used to enjoy it and I used to have pride in it, but I also worked a lot fewer hours and had people that actually appreciated my efforts. I do eat "bad" several times a week but for the most part, I do okay. I try to eat several veggies and some fruit in a day. I try to balance my carb intact and my proteins. I do drink one soda a day but I drink a lot of water. When I don't have a soda, I will drink one glass of milk or juice.... there are rare days I do both in one day (Sunday for example was a bad food day).... But truly I know what to eat, how to eat and how much. I know why I am overweight. Just right now, in this hole, it is not a priority.

And then I could complain about my kids. They do not help me around the house as much as I would like and they are somewhat disrespectful to me. I have tried many different things except for whatever works. Rewards, consequences, grounding, etc.... Doesn't matter to them. And I am sure if I had cameras in my house 24/7, I could see what it is I am doing wrong. I am a push over and I have some typical mommy guilt that causes me to reduce groundings and reward even when there is nothing to reward. I get it. But overall, I have good kids and they do know when to stop pushing back and just pick up.....

That is just a few of the things weighing heavy on my mind.... and it isn't even the big, huge elephant in the room problem that I can't seem to deal with. These are the fixable things at least. My big elephant is not at the moment fixable. Well really it is but I feel like I am in a lose-lose situation and the clock is ticking. And this is the one that keeps me hiding in this hole. This is one that if I decide to fix, it will get me out of the hole but do I want to?

I told myself several years ago that if I was ever unhappy with something in my life I would fix it. Be it a job, a relationship, myself, the house.... It didn't matter, I would take control and fix it. I vowed that life was too short to live it unhappy, yet what if the thing that brings you the most joy is also the thing destroying you day after day, week after week.... Then what?

So you see why I live with an elephant.

I don't want anyone reading into this what they think my problem might be that needs fixing. You could guess and guess, and you would be wrong.... and heck even if it were true, am I ready to admit it? No, not yet.

I don't really want someone to fix it for me either. I have to solve this problem. It is my problem.

It took me eight years to fix my last elephant sized problem and before that it was also years. I am a patient person but I also believe in taking risks. So just like I knew it was time to move back to Texas, end my marriage, quit a job I didn't like.... I will wait until I feel I am ready and only then can I walk away thinking, "No regrets! and What a ride!"

Ditto KimboSue above...I am here and thinking of you. Wish I lived nearby so we could take our elephants out for a walk in the park.

You made a lot of good points. It is easy to say "just take control and fix" often very difficult to do that in reality, because usually "fixing" one problem has a ripple effect on the rest of our life situation, and not all the ripples are good ones.

And yes, although I've often said that I'd like to go live on a deserted island, I guess we humans were not meant to be total recluses. And the risk we take when we let people get close to us is that we will get hurt.

I don't give a flying farthing what some random stranger thinks of me; however, people whose opinions I value also have the most power to hurt me.

Some wise person said that "nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission" (not sure who said it). I guess that's right, but it's hard to put into practice, especially when we are having a difficult time in other areas.

And isn't it interesting how the things that bother us the most, are often the things that we have the most difficutly writing about?

I have the exact same problem...I yammer on and on in my blog about various things, and while those things are certainly important, often they are NOT what is uppermost in my mind...or they only allude to it in the most obscure way. That's because some people from my daily life read my blog, so I feel that I need to censor myself to some degree.

Margaret's quote was taken right off the edge of my tongue - the wonderful Eleanor Roosevelt who said nobody has the right to make you feel bad without your permission. I live by that mantra and even named my daughter after her.

The thing with holes is that while we're peering up, others peer down at us in it and there are times we can't reach up to them and they can't reach down and only we know the impact of the thud when we've hit the bottom. Other people can only second guess the depth as they scrabble to find us in our own darkness.

I think trusting ourselves and trusting our own ability to know when to climb out is paramount and eventually you won't need to climb, the side of the hole will soften, you'll take a grip and slowly pull yourself out.

About Me

Pushing 40, single parenting. Long time relationship and a lot of attitude. I didn't think my life would look like this. But, ya know, sometimes life's little twists and turns are the best thing to happen to a person.